


Unearthly

by Raindropsonwhiskers



Series: DeCat AU [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Cats, I wrote this for about five people, Multi, Other, POV Alternating, Self-Indulgent, like canon divergence plus another au, old timey dialogue(aka the 70s), the worlds worst parent teacher conference, time lords are eldritch cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26904877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers
Summary: Susan Foreman is a wonderful student, mostly. There's just something a little weird about her. So, naturally, Ian and Barbara investigate.
Relationships: First Doctor & Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton & Barbara Wright, The Deca - Relationship
Series: DeCat AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967464
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Unearthly

**Author's Note:**

> A brief explanation: Yes this is another Cat Time Lord AU, but for this fic you don't need to be familiar with the premise of my other cat AU fic. It is completely separate - sort of a canon divergence AU of that AU. It is meant to be heavily implied that all the Deca are in a messy, clingy QPR but again, that's not really the focus of this particular fic.  
> Also, a quick guide to who is who for the Deca, as described in-fic, because I know it's a little confusing.  
> Theta - blond curls  
> Koschei - short black hair, glasses  
> Ushas - labcoat and glasses  
> Jelpax - long brown hair, suit  
> Vansell - long black hair  
> Rallon - dark skin, blue hair  
> Millennia - silver hair  
> Magnus - short ginger hair, broad shoulders  
> Mortimus - black hair in a mohawk  
> Drax - short brown hair

There's something…  _ off _ about Susan Foreman. It's an awful thing to think about one of her students, Barbara knows, but she just can't help it.

The girl is brilliant, that much is clear. She knows her history like the back of her hand, and she isn't shy about it - nor is she afraid to help the other students. And yet, she never seems to have any friends. A few hangers-on at every lunch break asking for help with a class, but never the same ones twice in a row, never anyone permanent.

And then there's the matter of the cats. They'd shown up a few days after the school year began, and they would spend the day lurking - there was really no better word for it - outside the building. On the one occasion the janitor had tried to shoo them away, he's been bitten for his troubles badly enough to need stitches. Susan, however, greets each of them before walking home, and they all follow behind her. It's utterly bizarre.

But Barbara did nothing about it until she had a talk with Mr. Chesterton -  _ Ian, _ he'd insisted she call him. They'd been packing up to go home in the teacher's lounge, and had somehow gotten on the topic of returning the start-of-year paperwork.

"My class have turned all theirs in, except Susan," Ian had said. "Well, she finally did today, after losing the sheet four times. Except - and it's odd - she turned all five sheets in, all with different names."

"For the parents?" Barbara asked. With Susan, it never hurt to clarify.

Ian nodded. "And they were quite odd names, too. What parents would name their child 'Theta Sigma' or- or 'Mortimus'?"

That was enough to make her pause halfway through tucking a folder into her bag. "Theta Sigma? That doesn't even  _ mean _ anything."

"I know!" he exclaimed. "And she just handed them over to me, apologized for the delay, and said that her parents had been a little busy."

"Too busy for their only child?" Barbara had tried to keep her tone non judgemental, but it was hard to imagine not being able to find time for a girl as bright as Susan.

"It worries me," Ian said.

"You know, I was planning to drop by her house soon, to talk to her parents about tutoring her more personally on history. She's got a real talent for it, and I think she should specialize. I mentioned it to her, but she said her parents don't like strangers." She shook her head. "I didn't pursue the point, only recently her homework has been so bad… If you'd like to drop by with me one day, I'd be grateful for the company."

"Yes, I think it might be a good idea to check up on her," Ian agreed.

And so, now the pair of them stand in front of the address where Susan supposedly lives, staring at an old junkyard.

"Are you sure that this is 76 Totter's Lane?" Ian asks. "There's a Haughter's Lane a few roads back. Perhaps we heard it wrong?"

"No, it's certainly Totter's Lane," Barbara insists. "The secretary wrote it down."

He frowns. "Perhaps we should just-"

A loud clattering sound cuts him off, followed by a low growling. Seconds later, three cats come running past, darting between piles of disused scrap and making a beeline for the exit. One nearly knocks Barbara over when it bowls into her legs in its desperation to get away from whatever's inside the junkyard.

She turns to look at Ian. "We can't just leave without investigating! What if she  _ is _ in there, and the thing that scared those poor cats is going to get her next?"

"What if it gets  _ us _ next?" Ian protests, but it's too late. Barbara has already stepped inside, and with a sigh, he follows her.

In the darkness and fog, shapes spring up unexpectedly from nowhere. Ian nearly trips over a broken radio, and Barbara's skirt catches on the protruding edge of a dilapidated refrigerator.

A voice -  _ Susan's _ voice - calls out from somewhere deeper in. "Vansell? Is that you? I thought Rallon told you to stop scaring the junkyard cats."

Ian and Barbara share a glance. As quietly as they can, they creep closer to the source of the sound.

They find themselves in a valley between the hills of garbage, with a police call box standing tall in the center. The doors are shut tight, and there's no sign of Susan, or anyone else.

"Susan?" Ian shouts. "Susan! It's Mister Chesterton and Miss Wright!"

He shivers, as suddenly a distinct feeling of being  _ watched _ settles over him. Turning, he catches a glimpse of yellow eyes reflecting the moonlight before they disappear, leaving him more unsettled than before.

"Susan?" he tries again.

There's a muffled noise from within the police box. It sounds like words, or at least like someone speaking.

"She must be in there," Barbara whispers. "Come on!"

She walks up to the box, ignoring Ian's startled noise and tugging on the handle of the door. It doesn't open. The sounds from inside go silent. Again, she tries to pull the door, and again, it stays resolutely closed.

With a huff, she shoves on the door instead, and much to Ian's surprise, it swings open. To his greater surprise, it seems to be far bigger inside than it should be, and filled with around half a dozen young adults, as well as Susan. Barbara steps back, her mouth hanging open.

"Oh. Uh, hello, Miss Wright and Mister Chesterton," Susan says, awkwardly waving one hand.

"Hello, Susan," Ian manages, after gathering himself. "Are you quite alright in there?"

He feels like a fool the minute he says it, but there's really nothing else to say. 'Why are you inside a box with a small gang of university students?' or 'Where are your parents and do they know that you're here?' seem a bit too on the nose for his ingrained British politeness.

"Yes, I'm fine," she says brightly. She turns to face the group of teenagers - they can't be older than their early twenties, Ian's sure of it - and says  _ something _ in a language his mind refuses to comprehend.

"Who are you?" Barbara demands, apparently having regained her confidence. "And what are you doing with Susan?"

Susan looks back at them, sheepish. "Miss Wright, Mister Chesterton, these are my parents. Most of them, anyhow. Vansell is probably still outside bothering the cats, and Ushas is in her lab, and I think Mortimus is making dinner, but… everyone else is here."

There is no way any of these adolescents actually produced Susan biologically, Ian thinks distantly. It's just not possible. He feels a bubble of hysterical laughter rise in his throat, and quickly squashes it down.

"I told him not to do that," one of them mutters, a young man with dark skin and bright blue hair down to his shoulders. "One of these days, one of them is going to fight instead of flee, and then he's going to get his arse kicked because he's an idiot."

"You shouldn't curse around children," Ian's mouth says on autopilot, before his brain catches up.

The gaggle of teenagers stares at him. Some of them tilt their heads quizzically, and a broad-shouldered boy with short-cropped ginger hair muffles a laugh behind one hand.

"Look, why don't you come in?" suggests a dark-haired boy with a charming smile. "I'm sure that we can explain any questions you have about-"

"Please don't murder my teachers, Koschei," Susan sighs. " _ All _ of you, please don't murder my teachers."

Ian glances frantically at Barbara, making sure that she heard that as well and that he wasn't just having sudden auditory hallucinations. Unfortunately, from how wide her eyes have gone, it's the former.

A young woman with long silvery hair sighs. "Susan, love, we've talked about this. As soon as they leave, they're going to call the police or UNIT, and then we're going to have to move again."

"But I  _ really _ like them. And they won't tell anyone anything, I promise," Susan pleads, like she's talking about a puppy she wants and not arguing for two people's lives. "Right?"

It takes a moment for Ian to process that she's talking to them. He doesn't even know what they would tell people - one of their students apparently lives in a box in a junkyard with a dozen people who may or may not be murderers and/or kidnappers? As if anyone would listen.

"Right," he nods, and Barbara quickly joins in.

There's a pause as the teenagers look at each other, and finally a boy with golden curls speaks.

"Very well. But if either of you speaks a word of this to a single person-" he makes cold eye contact with both of them "-then we will have to kill you."

"Oh, thank you!" Susan wraps her arms around the boy in a hug and beams. "You're the best!"

Ian tries not to think about the implications of what just happened too hard, because otherwise he thinks that his brain might just throw in the towel entirely. He's fairly sure that they aren't going to die, though. Still, the look in the eyes of that dark-haired boy - Koschei, he thinks - has him a little worried.

"You should really come in," Susan informs them. "And why are you here? Is there something wrong?"

"We wanted to ask you about…" Barbara trails off as she looks around the room, and Ian doesn't blame her.

The impossible dimensions of the box had fallen to the wayside when his life was teetering on the whims of a bunch of  _ children, _ but being inside of it makes his head spin. On the outside, the box was barely big enough to fit a single person, but inside is a room larger than the one he hosts his class in. In the center is a hexagonal panel of dials, buttons, switches, and levers, with dark panels of glass suspended from the ceiling. The walls are bright white and dotted with strange circular indentations. There's a pair of long black sofas stretching along two of the walls.

Susan tilts her head at Barbara's silence. "Are you alright, Miss Wright? I promise, my parents are really quite nice. They're just… protective."

"Do you really live here?" Barbara asks.

The blond boy looks at her sharply. "Is something wrong with that?"

"This was just a police box," Ian breathes.

"Technically, she still is," Susan says. "Just… not in here. Don't you understand?"

"She?" Ian asks, at the same time that Barbara replies, "Not at all, I'm afraid."

"Well, on the outside, the TARDIS is a police box. On the inside, she's not. This is just the console room, but I don't think showing you the rest is a very good idea right now." Susan says it as though it's obvious, just like she does for every question she answers in class. "Oh, yes! You wanted to ask me something?"

Ian shares a look with Barbara, trying to convey his utter confusion without being too obvious about it.

"Yes, I was wondering if your," Barbara pauses for a second to glance at the accumulated teenagers, "family would be amenable to me tutoring you more personally, so that you can specialize in history next year."

There's a murmur in that same language Susan had spoken in earlier, accompanied by a general shuffling from the young adults.

"Is there something wrong with her current level of knowledge?" asks a young man wearing a suit and tie, his long brown hair neatly braided back.

"No, no. Quite the opposite, really," Barbara assures him, and then amends, "Well... Her homework has been a little poor as of late."

Ian expects, from past experience with parents, to bear witness to a somewhat awkward and embarrassing lecture about taking away privileges until Susan's homework improves. Instead, he gets flat, condescending stares.

"Yes, I imagine it is. You barely challenge her, and you expect her to care about answering problems she could have done as a newborn?" snaps the ginger boy.

The boy with short, curly brown hair lays a hand on his shoulder. "Magnus, be fair. They've only just figured out photosynthesis. We knew when we picked this time that it was going to be a little rough for Susan."

Once again, Ian feels like he's being treated like some entertaining  _ pet _ rather than a person. It's a sensation he is quickly growing used to.

With a smile too toothy to be reassuring, the silver-haired girl turns to them and says, "Why don't you stay over for dinner? Mortimus is quite the history fan himself, I'm sure he'd love to talk to you."

"I certainly wouldn't mind," says Barbara.

"I- well, I should really-" Ian starts, before Barbara stomps her foot on top of his hard enough to make him wince. "I mean, I would love to!"

Barbara hadn't known what, exactly, to expect when she accepted the offer of dinner. The food is blessedly normal, or close enough that she can pretend that the chicken - or whatever meat it is - isn't just a little too purple to be right. It's a little harder to pretend the conversation isn't bizarre, though.  


"Yes, right now I'm teaching about the American Revolution," she explains, to the slightly-too-intent delight of Mortimus.

"Ah, right. King James was quite the interesting fellow," the young man nods. "Don't blame them for revolting, though."

Susan, on the opposite side of the table, buries her face in her hands and groans.

"King… James?" Barbara echos, incredulous. "I don't know what you mean."

"The American Revolution against England, under the rule of King James," Mortimus explains. "In - what was it - the seventeen hundreds? Eighteen hundreds? Somewhere around there."

He seems completely earnest, despite being almost entirely incorrect. Barbara blinks, and only barely refrains from asking where on  _ Earth _ he was educated. She isn't sure she wants to know the answer.

"Drax, it was the eighteen hundreds, wasn't it?" Mortimus turns from Barbara to look at the man next to him.

Drax shrugs. "I'll check."

He pulls out a small- well, Barbara's not quite sure  _ what _ it is, but it looks like the panes of glass in the console room - and does something to make it light up. After a moment, he says, "Nope, 1770s. Sorry."

Mortimus nods sagely, then faces Barbara again. "Right, yes, then! And what are you teaching about it?"

"We're currently covering the…" Rather annoyingly, every lesson plan has disappeared from her mind entirely, and she flounders for a moment.

"How the French helped the colonies win," Susan chimes in.

"Precisely." Barbara tries not to sound  _ too _ relieved. "Good work, Susan."

"With their superior knowledge of aeronautical travel, that only makes sense," Mortimus agrees. "Airships are a vital part of the French military force, after all."

Barbara nearly chokes on her bite of chicken.

Ian isn't doing much better. He had made the mistake of mentioning that he taught science and math, and was now being interrogated, for lack of a better word, by Ushas, a severe young woman wearing a labcoat and wire-rimmed glasses. After being met with obvious confusion on the topics of interstellar physics, dimensional manipulation, and whatever branch of science extra-dimensional mycology is supposed to be, she had clearly lowered her standards.

"Have you taught her about chemistry, yet?"

He nearly faints with relief. This, he knows and can handle. "Yes. We just did a lab involving the use of litmus paper a few days ago."

The girl hums, frowning. "Susan told me about that. She said that you were just showing that the chemicals caused it to change color, not  _ doing _ anything with it."

"Well, yes. It was just to illustrate cause and effect," Ian explains. "It's far too early in the year to be experimenting with true chemical changes, after all."

His answer seems to baffle her. Suddenly, Ian thinks he understands where Susan gets some of her puzzlement about science from; he'd wondered where she'd learned everything before attending Coal Hill.

"What about biology?" Ushas asks, apparently done with the previous subject. "Surely you know of DNA by now."

"Yes, of course," he replies. "It was discovered nearly ten years ago."

She doesn't smile, but the severity in her eyes lessens slightly. "Have you begun teaching her how to splice genes, then?"

And once again, Ian is completely lost.

"Er, no. Not- not yet, no," he says.

Ushas looks somewhat disappointed by that. Ian scrambles for a safer topic of conversation.

"So, how do you all know each other?" he tries.

Every conversation comes to a halt. Ten pairs of eyes fix on him like ravens watching a struggling deer take a deadly misstep. He regrets asking.

"It's a long story," says Vansell. He thinks it's Vansell; one of the ones with dark hair and a terrifying gaze.

"It's not, he's being dramatic," Susan sighs. "They all met at school and became friends, then Theta kidnapped me and they had to leave Gallifrey so that they wouldn't be executed."

The following silence is deafening. Finally, Barbara breaks the quiet, sounding a little strangled.

"Kidnapped?"

"It's cool, her progenitors are  _ awful, _ " Magnus says casually. "Total bastards."

" _ Executed? _ " Ian manages.

"Yes, executed," Theta sighs. "The President doesn't take too kindly to having his granddaughter stolen, oddly enough."

"And, uh, where exactly is Gallifrey?" Barbara asks. "It sounds Irish, but-"

"A long, long way from here," Magnus says. "And a long  _ time _ from here, too."

So, they're space aliens and time travelers. Sure, Ian thinks. Why not. This might as well happen.

The table falls a bit silent after that, no one willing to speak first. Susan looks as though she's going to, opening her mouth once or twice, but she never does manage words.

"Well, it's been lovely meeting you," Barbara says, standing and pushing her chair in. "But it's getting late, and three of us have school tomorrow, so I'm afraid Ian and I need to leave."

Ian has never been more grateful in his life for Barbara's willingness to take the lead. "Yes, er, quite. Susan, don't forget that we're having a test tomorrow."

"I'll show you out," Susan offers. "The TARDIS can get a little confusing sometimes."

"But we're only just down the hall from the - what was it? - the console room," he points out.

The girl shakes her head. "Yes, well, that might have changed. She has a funny sense of humor."

Instead of pointing out the absurdity of the situation, Ian simply nods and follows Susan out of the room, trying to ignore the feeling of all ten teenagers watching him leave. Once he's home, he can freak out and try to process what, exactly, all of this means.

Getting out of the TARDIS is much harder than getting in was. Susan leads them hrough a series of winding corridors, her hand trailing along the wall, and occasionally stopping at intersections to consider. Finally, they're back in the console room, and Susan stops awkwardly by the strange, six-sided contraption in the middle of the room.

"I hope my parents didn't frighten you," she says apologetically. "They just aren't used to other people. And- you do promise you won't tell anyone about this, don't you?"

"Of course we won't," Ian nods.

Susan smiles. "Oh, thank you! And Miss Wright, I'll talk to them about specializing. I do so love history, and I really would like to do more intensive studies on the topic."

"Good, good," says Barbara, who looks a little bit like she'd forgotten about that entirely. Ian doesn't blame her. "Well, I suppose we'll see you tomorrow for class. Have a lovely night, Susan."

"You too, Miss Wright, Mister Chesterton!" Susan replies.

Ian follows Barbara out of the TARDIS doors, and he's careful to close them behind him. For a moment, both of them stand in the cool night air in silence. Ian is almost tempted to offer Barbara his coat, but he can't quite work up the gall.

"You know, I feel as though this explains quite a lot about Susan," she finally says.

He laughs; there's not much else he can really do in response other than that. "Yes, it really does."

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please leave a kudos and a comment! There might be more fics in this AU to come, so keep an eye out


End file.
